Internet symbolizes new, misty dawn

The twists and turns on the superhighway to East Asia could lead
to delightful discoveries but also blind alleys. "While looking
for data about Kazuo Ishiguro, I ran into 10 dead ends before I
found something worthy reading," says Jessica Martin. "By that
time I was dizzy from staring at the screen so long." Ben Bacola
agrees that it may be a time-consuming process to reach what the
user seeks on the Internet, but when he or she finds it, it is
worth all the effort and the struggle. The journey could be a
bumpy one, but sometimes it is a joy ride.

The Internet symbolizes a new dawn in the science of
telecommunication, says Kevin Hodgson. What comes along with every
morning sunrise is a fog. "It would be naive not to think that a
little scepticism is necessary in order to see more clearly what
lies beyond ur rpesent field of vision. Whether or not the
Internet will contribute to the advancement of our species will be
decided by those who continue to devlop, and more importantly, use
it." Highlights from class discussions:

Daniel Sun: Surfing the net, I was surprised to discover
the large number of journals on Asian studies in Australia. White
Australia, which used to tie itself to Europe, is turning its
attention to the booming Asia-Pacific region.

Shelly-Ann Gunness: "Necessity is the mother of invention."
We are fast approaching the six billion mark. The Internet is a
new invention to meet this demand for expanded communication among
the world's ever-increasing huge population. As a research tool,
it has become a technological encyclopedia of the world.

Neena Gill: The Internet delivers convenience, but I cannot
say that this information superhighway can be used with great
ease. Perhaps if it continues to progress as its presently, the
Internet will become more user-friendly for individuals like
me.

Jessica Martin:Being a technophobe means that I have an
automatic mute button in my ear that goes off whenever the subject
of "surfing the net" and "chatting on line" comes up. Finally I
took the plunge and got on the proverbial surfboard because the
Internet is a component of my contemporary East Asian Literature
course, and a good portion of my tuition is paying for it. What I
found was not quite the fast-paced high-tech excitement I'd
expected. Often the information you are looking for is buried
under tons of useless information.

Julie Shim: Indeed, a serious researh needs to do much
sifting for academic and ltierary information because it is lost
among a large heap of garbage. The Internet's accessibility is
good in that it allows even the computer illiterate to use, but it
also allows people complete freedom in what articles are placed on
it, including illicit pornograpny and unverified "facts."

Brenda Lo: When I am using the Internet for research, I am
not concerned about its realiability. There are so many web sites
on a singular topic that if they are posting false information,
immediately the users will know because it is totally different
from the data supplied by the other web sites. I am more concerned
about the usefulness of the sources.

Megan Donnelly: This first-year critical skills course has
launched me onto the Internet. I am in my sixth month of struggle
with the electronic superhighway. Every time I sit at a computer I
am afriad that I will press the wrong button and crash the hard
drive or set off some kind of alarm. Here I have to weed out the
garbage interwined with the useful resources.

I have learned the basics, and have entered the honeymoon phase of
my Internet experiences. I have found countles galleries and
artists' home pages. When I was writing an essay on modern women
painters in China, I was even able to post questions on a women's
interest site.

Neena Gill: I had never used this super-highway until I
took this course, and a few months later, I have my work published
in Road to East Asia. However, as a writer for a journal on
the internet, the issue of accountability and sense of readership
have raised a great deal of fear. Opinions without sufficient
reliable evidence could be branded as propaganda. Yet finding
undisputable evidence to support my controversial opinions could
sometimes be like searching for a contact lens in a dumpster.

Derrick Choy: The Internet is the wave of the future. It is
a place where people can gather information as well as express
their opinions and disseminate their knowledge of different
subjects.

Hilaneh Mahmoudi:Using the Internet has made our lives
easier. It gives us the opportunity to gather recent information
on any single subject of interest quickly and conveniently, even
from the comfort of one's room in the dormitory.

On of my friends will be spending this summer in Laos and I have
decided to join him and started looking up some material on that
country. I was disappointed by the fact that most of the materials
available in the library were from the 1970s and 1980s. I was
pleased by the vast array of very recent information on the
Internet. Incidentally, while I spent two days at the lbirary
trying to find relevant books, my search on the Internet took only
a few minutes.

Jessica Martin: There is the problem of not being able to
access some of the seemingly useful articles or websites. Also,
the information you get on the Internet is not always from an
official surce so you must question the validity of everything you
read. In the end you will need to do further research to test tehe
reliability of that sources.

Megan Donnelly: I really have not been able to accept the
Internet as a very reliable reference source yet. However this has
given me a great sense of responsibility, regarding my own work. I
realize that my own work could easily be biased or wrong, and that
I have to worry about who will be reading it--a knowledgeable
professor who recognizes my mistakes or a child who will use me as
a reference as she forms her opinions of a country I have never
seen.

Jessica Martin: In fact, use of the internet fools people
into thinking we are more connected with the things outside our
homes but actually we are becoming mroe detached. If all it takes
is the flick of a switch to transport ourselves to Africa, what
reason would we have o actually go there and see for ourselves
what it's all about.

I enjoy sticking a stamp on an envelope and waiting three weeks
for a response to my handwritten letter. I enjoy going to the
library to do research for my assignments, walking through the
stacks of books and sifting through the pages. I enjoy picking up
a magazine and looking at beautiful photographs of places I hope
to visit one day.

Perhaps I am a small-minded, old-fashioned fool who will be left
behind in a world of tradition and stagnation while my peers
venture out nto the exciting, fast-paced world of computer
technology. So leave me behind, I say.

Kevin Hodgson: In the Fourth Century B.C., Aristotle stated
that true happiness can be achieved only through the acquisition
of knowledge. If his words still have relevance in the post-modern
world, which I believe they still do, then the Internet has made a
signigicant contribution to how we reseach information and gather
knowledge. The Internet is highly unorganized. One must suffer the
frustration of sifting out the useful letters of the informed
authority from the doltish ramblings of the layman. For some, it
is a toy, a replacement for the television as a form of
intellectually pacifying entertainment.